The present invention relates to a surfactant for microbubble formation and to a detergent composition comprising the same.
In recent years, microbubbles in water, such as microbubbbles of the order of micrometers in diameter or nanobubbles of the order of nanometers in diameter have been widely studied and, owing to their utility, various applications of these microbubbles (referring to bubbles not greater than 1 mm in diameter; hereinafter the same shall apply), for example in cleaning machine parts, have been proposed.
For generating these microbubbles stably, the technique comprising adding a surfactant to water or the like in advance has been proposed (Non-Patent Document 1).
However, the surfactants described in the above-cited Non-Patent Document 1 have problems, for example the problem of how to generate such microbubbles as mentioned above, the problem in that the microbubbles obtained are unstable and the effect thereof can hardly be sustained for a long period of time and the problem in that bubbles (referring to larger bubbles than the microbubbles defined hereinabove, for example bubbles exceeding 1 mm in diameter; hereinafter the same shall apply) are generated in the microbubble forming apparatus, making it difficult to handle the apparatus.
Non-Patent Document 1: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers Collected Papers (Series B), Vol. 69, No. 686, pp. 16-23 (2003; published by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers)